Recent years have brought rapid innovations to artificial intelligence (AI) technology. AI is now found in a host of different industries, and more and more companies are experimenting with incorporating AI systems into their business operations in order to increase efficiency, broaden reach, or expand their range of products and services. Further, AI has never held a more prominent place in the public eye: Microsoft’s $10-billion investment in OpenAI, the company that launched the chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022, and the way that AI system has taken the world by storm are just the latest evidence of AI’s dominance.But as AI continues to proliferate and becomes broader in scope and more powerful, there are also a variety of dangers it poses, ranging from the small to, potentially, the existential. Not all of these are equally likely, of course, but they remain reasons to be cautious about this new technology. Below, we take a closer look at some of the many dangers of AI.
Deepfakes and Misinformation
A deepfake is a convincing, computer-generated artificial image or video. The word “deepfake” may originate from the AI-related term “deep learning,” the process by which some AI systems analyze huge amounts of data to train themselves and “learn.” Deepfakes are an emerging concern within the last few years.
The potential dangers of deepfakes are significant, and they represent one of the most visible examples of a broader category of AI risk: misinformation. AI can be used to create and to widely share material that is incorrect but which looks convincingly true. There are a host of social, political, and legal ramifications for deepfakes and other AI-generated misinformation, and one of the biggest issues is that there currently exists essentially no regulation about these materials.
Privacy
AI uses huge amounts of information to train itself, and this information usually consists of real data from real people. This alone constitutes a potential invasion of privacy. And there are specific examples of AI systems, including computer vision and facial recognition tools, among others, which present even greater privacy threats. AI systems can be trained to recognize individual human faces, allowing them to potentially surveil societies and exert control over human behavior. Used by bad actors, these AI programs could play a key role in large-scale societal repression or worse.
Job Loss
One of the most common concerns about AI is that it will lead to automation of skills and processes that is so efficient that it leads to the elimination of human jobs or even entire industries. In reality, experts are conflicted about the possible impact of AI on jobs. One recent study suggests some 85 million jobs could be lost due to AI automation between 2020 and 2025. Another suggests that AI could create 97 million new jobs by 2025.On one hand, AI is working toward automating many simple tasks that are used in some work settings: consider how the push toward autonomous vehicles could pose a threat to the job of delivery driver, for instance.
On the other hand, generative AI—AI used to create new content rather than to automate preexisting tasks—likely has many more barriers before it can pose a threat to human jobs. These positions often require uniquely human characteristics like empathy and creativity.
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